Heterotopic Nowhere

“Heterotopic Nowhere” was shot in Thailand in 2015. The narrative of the film is some what a stream of consciousness but unfolds as a commentary on mediating our experiences with technology. Using the images and sounds from Thailand, the narrative becomes analogous to Dante’s Inferno, seeking to justify the schism between the world of the living and nonliving, the real and the representation, the mediated and the authentic experience.

“What a beautiful realization, to find myself here in this movement of history. Where the feats of man and technology sets a new precedent for our journey. The limitations we have surpassed, the truths we have unveiled.The new horizons opening before us. The rediscovery of who we are and our role in the cosmos. The new expression of who we are as our world continues to shrink.

Unfortunately we are in this receding memory of who we once were. Collectively recalling is hopeless. We can only continue with our task at hand. For no man is an island, and I am involved in mankind, but like I said, our memory is receding, and the recollection of who we once were, is dissolving into this imposing moment of history.

Memory is not static. Memory reflects the moment of history in which we are caught. History is not static. History reflects the will to power in which we are subjugated.

Dharma is the Order of All Things. The Order of All Things is Change. The Order of All Things is Life feeding on life feeding on life feeding on life. The Order of All Things is Life to conquer itself and to break the barriers of its isolation and re-evaluate itself with a new identity. Life, by Nature, is a predatory expression. Civilization, by rule, is a domesticating function.

But most can only focus on the task at hand. Where one’s labor, life, and time is invested in the sanctification of the holy market place. For the Order of All Things is ex-Change. Where Life, as a commodity, trades itself.

In the darkness of image, in the underbelly of mediation, I realize the best way out is through.Kharon, the ferryman of the underworld, is the transmitter of the mediating vehicle. The Image is the vehicle. Transporting the identity of experience into a heterotopic nowhere. A continual exchange of mediation, without a final destination. The speed and efficiency of the Image vehicle makes it all the more ubiquitous, dominant, and uniform. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

How did we get here? This order of movement. This regulation and discipline. This continual exchange of mediation without a final destination. This accelerating race, the human race, racing to nowhere. Carried at first by the vehicles of metabolic bodies, we then found acceleration with the Engine. And as we have gathered all the more on the vehicle of the Engine, the new evolution of speed is sparked with the Vehicle of the Image.

Witnessing the ruins of our predecessors, I ask myself, what will be the ruins to come as we are carried by the Image Vehicle? How will History preserve our ruins of our present global culture. The order of our movement, the movement carried by the Image vehicle?

“I’ll race to Nowhere, I’ll race to Nowhere, I am Nowhere, I’ll race to Nowhere, I’ll run to Nowhere”

In this future time, but nowhere in space, we’ll look back at our race to nowhere.Our compulsion to get here. The heterotopic territory fixated on the continual exchange of mediating our experience.

We are hypnotized by speed, the speed of the image, transcribing in our minds, searing its brand, its mark, its rhythm. Imposing itself incessantly as the idealized reality. Evaluating, amusing, pacifying, yet isolating. Images flutter quickly out of the periphery. Magnetically pulling our gaze into it. This is the re-inscription of the slave race. The new ethnicity of a false imagined people. Consuming our time, sedating our minds, consuming our life.

Now on the shores of our mediated experience, as Kharon the ferryman has taken us to the nether world, the world of the image, is our world image a heaven of hell? Or a hell of heaven?”